Assignment 17 - Max Morris

     Trendy bars and restaurants. Conversions of dilapidated buildings into beautiful and affordable new homes and businesses. Skyrocketing rental and housing rates. Sounds like a place you’d want to live, doesn’t it? I hope so, because it’s going on in Lexington right now. North Limestone, an area formerly known as a haven for prostitutes and drug dealers, has taken a turn for the Bohemian. Just ten years ago, you would never visit Al’s Bar after dark without a gun. Now, it’s one of the hottest bars in Lexington, serving local microbrews and hosting big-name musicians. To almost anyone, this would seem like a great development for our city. However, a very vocal minority has arisen, crying out the dreaded g-word: Gentrification, or, as the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it,the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas. They do have a point: What is happening in North Limestone is gentrification. But is gentrification a bad thing? I say no. 

     If there’s one positive of gentrification that everyone can agree upon, it is its dramatic effect on crime. In a 2012 study in Washington DC, one of the most famed examples of gentrification in the United States, it was found that homicide rates dropped from 500 a year in the 90s to just 100 a year, a decrease of over 80 percent.  This can be explained by increased attempts to crackdown on crime, as well as simply by an overall improvement in atmosphere. I’m sure everyone can agree that crime is a unanimously bad thing, and anything to lessen it, I feel, is a positive for the community. How happy can a person truly be in their neighborhood if they can’t take their dog for a walk without facing drug-addled assailants and vicious muggers? 

     Another aspect helped by gentrification is that of basic community improvement. Most obvious are the aesthetic changes it brings about: Colorful murals replace hateful graffiti, and the abandoned liquor store is now home to an artisan cheese shop with a rooftop garden. More important, though, are those that are less visible. Gentrification provides many jobs, both in its influx of new retail and restaurant jobs, and the construction needed to improve these poor areas. While some argue that this is only true in the case of wealthy and elite individuals, a 2008 study by researchers at the University of Colorado, University of Pittsburgh, and Duke, actually found the opposite to be true: Low-income high-school educated citizens benefitted from a 33% income increase in gentrified communities, while for the wealthy and college-educated, it only increase by 20%.  It also provides cheap storefronts to ambitious young artists and hopeful business proprietors, allowing them to open the gallery or shop they’ve always wanted. Even more importantly, the increased property tax on gentrified areas also leads to more funding for local projects, such as schools and community centers. Since low-income areas are often home to the worst schools, this funding is beneficial for all families, both new residents and old. Gentrification undoubtedly plays a part in overall improvement of communities, aesthetically, financially, and socially. 

     When talking about gentrification, one cannot avoid mentioning the one big elephant in the room, and that problem is displacement. For all of its fantastic effects on new residents, the rising property costs of gentrification undoubtedly displaces many of the original poor residents into different areas of the community. This, however, may not be such a bad thing. In many cases, especially recently, government funds, often coming from the increased property tax of gentrification, is used to build new, and often better, areas for the displaced poor. This can even be seen in Lexington, in the new suburbs built around Williams Wells Brown elementary school. Even in cases when these new communities are not built, the former homes of new residents are often freed up and made less expensive, allowing the former residents of gentrified neighborhoods to move in. While displacement is an effect of gentrification, it isn’t necessarily a consequence. As I mentioned earlier, is having to move away really such a bad thing when you couldn’t even safely walk down the streets of your former home. Another common complaint of gentrification critics is that it destroys the “soul” and “grittiness” of the original community. This opinion is fairly easily dismissible, however, as it relies almost entirely on a romanticized view of lower class society, as well as the uncalled for hatred of those deemed as “hipsters” that has taken over society as of late. While on TV, you may prefer the colorful eccentrics of Do the Right Thing over the snobby and pretentious characters in Portlandia, when it gets down to it, which neighborhood would you rather live in? I’d take an iPad-toting art student over a gun-toting cocaine dealer any day. 

     Next time you speak to your parents, ask them about North Limestone. If they were raised in Lexington, they are sure to have at least one horror story. Now contrast this with the area now, a place you hang out with friends and take in a concert on a weekend night, or buy a donut and a cup of coffee on the way to work. It shouldn’t be difficult to decide upon which one is preferable. While critics may attack gentrification as an attack upon and forced removal of the poor, its benefits are too big to ignore, for both the former residents and the new. Gentrification is an organic process, and if we care about the state of our city, we should not fight it. It is not economic Darwinism, but a great step in improving a community and stepping out of poverty forever.